"In the sacred precinct, and in its dependencies, all breathed of voluptuousness, all spoke to the senses.

The air of the place was full of perfumes, full of soft and caressing sounds.

There was the murmur of rills which flowed over a carpet of flowers; there was, in the foliage above, the song of the nightingale, and the prolonged and tender cooing of the dove; there were, in the groves around, the tones of the flute, the instrument which sounds the call to pleasure, and summons to the banquet chamber the festive procession and the bridal train.

Beneath the shelter of tents, or of light booths with walls formed by the skilful interlacing of a green mass of boughs, through which the myrtle and the laurel spread their odours, dwelt the fair slaves of the goddess, those whom Pindar called, in the drinking-song which he composed for Theoxenus of Corinth, 'the handmaids of persuasion.'"[635] Here and there in the precincts, sacred processions took their prescribed way; ablutions were performed; victims led up to the temple; votive offerings hung on the trees; festal dances, it may be, performed; while in the cloister which skirted the peribolus, dealers in shrines and images chaffered with their customers, erotic poets sang their lays, lovers whispered, fortune-tellers plied their trade, and a throng of pilgrims walked lazily along, or sat on the ground, breathing in the soft, moist air, feasting their eyes upon the beauty of upspringing fountain and flowering shrub, and lofty tree, while their ears drank in the cadences of the falling waters, the song of the birds, and the gay music which floated lightly on the summer breeze.
Phoenician temples had sometimes adjuncts, as cathedrals have their chapter-houses and muniment rooms, which were at once interesting and important.

There has been discovered at Athienau in Cyprus--the supposed site of Golgi--a ruined edifice, which some have taken for a temple,[636] but which appears to have been rather a repository for votive offerings, a sort of ecclesiastical museum.